Ongoing sagas, for movies at least, often get worse over time. Look at the Star Wars series. Three of the greatest films ever, followed by a depressing array of follow-ups ranging from terrible to maybe passable. Same with the Police Academy “comedies.”
Like these other ongoing sagas, Jackson County’s assessment practices have been getting worse, though they were never great to being with. As bad as the situation was in 2019 and earlier, in 2023 it hit bottom.
The Missouri State Tax Commission (STC) has taken the unprecedented step of ordering Jackson County to essentially ditch the 2023 reassessment and move every change in assessed valuation (AV) that was over a 15 percent increase down to 15 percent. The total AV increase for Jackson County was almost 25 percent, which is enormous. Obviously, if the total increase was 25 percent, a substantial number of individual properties had to go up more than that 15 percent number. (The 15 percent level is key because that is where additional taxpayer notification laws come into play.)
This change lowers the assessed valuation for tens of thousands of properties and involves hundreds of millions in AV. According to Jackson County, the total amount of tax revenue disputed here for various local governments is $117 million. (The AV would be significantly higher than the tax revenues.)
Jackson County has been underassessed for decades. Jackson County has been attempting to correct that in recent years (under direction from the STC), and that is a good thing. More accurate assessments don’t have to lead to higher taxes, except in the Kansas City 33 school district, but’s that another issue. However, Jackson County officials seem to think that their attempts to correct prior errors somehow exempt them from following the current laws. As a county official admits in the just-filed lawsuit against the STC order :
This filing is not just about the legalities—it’s about safeguarding the resources that support our schools, public safety and community programs. [emphasis mine]
Fortunately for taxpayers, good intent does not exempt you from following the laws in reassessment. As the STC order states, the Jackson County assessors made all sorts of mistakes in 2023:
9. The Commission finds and determines that in conducting its biennial reassessment for 2023, Jackson County assessing officials failed to give proper notice to property owners and failed to perform physical inspections as required by Section 137.115 RSMo. where the assessed valuation of residential real property increased by more than fifteen percent since the last assessment, resulting in mistaken or erroneous assessments and taxes that were mistakenly or erroneously levied or paid in 2023 . . .
The STC order goes into more detail on a number of failures by the assessor’s office.
The order may well impose a major burden on taxing agencies in Jackson County that must now redo their valuations and property tax rates. But just because it’s a major burden doesn’t mean taxpayers should have to accept having their rights violated.
I hope the Jackson County lawsuit fails and the STC order is upheld. The county assessor should not be allowed to ignore the very clear rules—rules that every other county assessor had managed to follow in recent years—that protect the rights of property owners. This may be a mess in Jackson County, but it is a mess of the county’s own creation.
